Hurghada Day 4

Egypt 12.4.2008

I am now qualified PADI open water diver, hurraah. The last two days have been busy with the diving course. Yesterday there was my first dive from a boat and also the exam for the qualification. and do I hate exams, but the coral reefs were great. The exam was not too difficult although I did not do too well with the dive charts. As for my work letting a computer to do the number crunching would be the thing. From tv it is difficult if not impossible to grasp the diving experience; submersion, weightlessness, scale and variety of surrouding corals and discovery of all kinds of fish just minding their business when you float by. The visibility of the water was not as good you'd expect from the tv documentaries. I guess they shoot them when the conditions are just right. When you add little bit of salt water within the mask, being slightly cold and having your ears do weird things you start to approach the real scuba diving experience. I am writing this early in the morning as I have been too excited/nervous to sleep after about 5.30 when a loud group of Finns woke me up. Maybe they were the two Finnish guys Mika and Jukka from the diving course, returning to the hotel. They will not be diving today and I need to find myself a new diving buddy. Hopefully, somebody who can use compass better than I do. I went out with them last night. (At the time of writing) for people who are tired of hotel lounge bars in Hurghada, I could point out Papas bar. According to our instructor it is a place where diver's go to have a pint or two, and the atmosphere indeed was relaxed. Today if all goes well I will clubbing in Headkandi. Less than five hours of sleep last night might require few of hours of sleep during the day though. Tomorrow, there will be no diving as the flight on Monday is so early, that the precautionary time between flying and diving is not quite enough for a meaningful diving day. but I am getting ahead of myself. .